


Better Than Me

by ChelseasDeadSmile



Series: Chelsea's One-Shots [22]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Darcy Lewis, Bucky Barnes Feels, Darcy Feels, Darcy's Aware, Darcyland, F/M, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, SHIP DARCY WITH ALL THE THINGS, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 03:44:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7785472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChelseasDeadSmile/pseuds/ChelseasDeadSmile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Through torture and broken bones, all Darcy wanted was Winter to stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better Than Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first **official** trip into Darcyland, and, I shouldn't have written this, but I did anyway.
> 
> What I Blame For This Fic: [You deserve better than me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC4Iam6LM1k)
> 
> I blame the first 10 seconds of that video for making me want to write this. It, also, helps that another of Seb's characters say it.
> 
> Without further ado, please, enjoy this little one-shot ^ ^

“Was it real? Was anything of what we had real?” she asked as she looked at the back of the retreating assassin that had, in just a few short months, saved her from a Nazi organization hell bent on the old “Control the world” ploy that bad guys have been striving to do for centuries over and over again in film, literacy, and plays.

_ Darcy Lewis was, by no means, the classical Damsel in distress, no, she was the Damsel that fought until she was battered and bruised, and yet, still fought as much as she could until she was barely able to move a meter because her body hurt too much. _

_ When HYDRA got to her after the Battle of Greenwich, they interrogated her on Jane’s research of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge that’d try to recreate that effects of the Bifrost from Asgard, but, they’d been delayed in that due to Malakith coming to Earth and, much like HYDRA, trying to conquer it and the other Nine Realms of Yggdrasil. _

_ At least that guy's plans involved other planets and not just Earth. _

_ Darcy smart-mouthed her way through their questions which always ended with a strike to her face, torso, arms, or legs; she was spitting blood by the end of their first four hour session together, and was barely able to see passed a line the second time around due to two swollen shut eyes. _

_ The third time around, however, they brought in the Winter Soldier, and he tried breaking her as well with dislocating her shoulders along with breaking her legs which would make it impossible for her to get away should the chance arise. _

_ Each day the beatings got worse, and her will to not talk got weaker and weaker, but, really, if they wanted her to talk they shouldn’t have made it impossible for her to do the one thing they wanted.  Their fault - not hers. _

_ She was somewhere between pain-filled sleep, and waking agony when something changed...like someone physically picked her up and started moving her out of the hell hole that had become her home in the few weeks that she’d been there.  Whoever it was, she’ll bake them cookies once she could feel her bones again. _

_ It’s safe to say it was a rude awakening once she realized her biggest tormentor was actually her savior.  Boy, wasn’t that a plot twist. _

“You’re the only real thing I ever touched,” Winter said in a voice that sounded so sincerely honest that it broke Darcy’s heart all over again.  Hearing him say that she could do so much better than him was a lie, felt like a lie, but, in the grand scheme of things, could she?

She knew she had to of developed some form of Stockholm Syndrome during the time they were together, because there would be no way that she could have fallen for the guy that was in charge of beating her over and over again repeatedly for three weeks straight, but...she did.

She fell for the militaristic way he saw the world, she fell for the man that, cold as he may seem, wasn’t all that cold at all, and she undoubtedly fell for the way that he wanted her to be able to beat him as best as she could in a fight just to make sure no one would be able to get the drop on her again.

If he had been anyone else, she would have whined and complained about being forced to learn how to shoot a gun, because she downright hated them with a passion that rivaled the sun.  Now, she could hit a target over 300 feet away, she could also fight with knives, and her hand-to-hand combat was on par with a trained assassins.

Now, now he was leaving.

Now, he felt that his work with her was done, and he had to return to the clutches of the beast in hopes that she’d be able to find her way back to the Avengers.  She didn’t want to return, though - she wanted him to stay with her, and teach her more of the things she needed to know in order to survive a world she was going to drown in.

Tazing Gods, and fighting aliens were becoming the norm in her life.  Meeting HYDRA face to face had been the thing to shake the bedrock that she’d been standing on and she crumbled under the weight until he took her away from it all.  What he taught her will always be put to use in some way in order to save her life now, and...it always just comes down to her wanting him to stay with her.

They could run away from HYDRA, the Avengers, and whoever would want him to account for his sins.  It could just be the both of them.

But, no, that was all the Stockholm Syndrome talking, and the Darcy Lewis in the past would have sucked it up in order to agree with him - he was right after all.

Past Darcy would say that he is a danger to her and whoever was around him and that it’d be better that he left rather than stick around to teach her all he knew which would cause his nightmares to get worse, and his emotions would scatter around them both.

They both couldn’t risk being together any longer without serious long term consequences, but, it didn’t make it any less harder for even Past Darcy to deal with, after all, they’d spent four whole months together in order for her to recover from countless broken bones, and then whip her ass into shape in order to be able to fight off someone as strong as a super soldier.

Ain’t life grand?

Now here she was, standing in an alley that was overlooked by Avengers Tower, and her Winter was leaving her.

In a last ditch effort to have one last fill of him, she pleaded to him while running toward him, “Please, don’t go.  Please, don’t go.”  Turning back to her, he was caught unaware when pressed her lips against his and he was immediately able to detect the pleading message within the kiss that Darcy was trying to convey.

It seemed that the walls he had put into place around his heart were bulldozed over because he turned and pressed Darcy against the closest alley wall in order to turn the kiss into something more hungry rather than a plea for him not to leave.

With her arms going around his neck and the lick of his tongue against her mouth, the kiss went far deeper than Winter was ever intending for it to go, but, he couldn’t bring himself to reject her this one last pleading request before he left.

He didn’t want to leave her, but he had too.  He was becoming too volatile, too unstable, and he was remembering things that couldn’t possibly be his own memories, so, he had to return to HYDRA or risk harming the one good thing that he’s ever had.  In all of his years as the Winter Soldier, he’s never once gone against his programming in order to save one of his assignments.

This assignment, though, had refused to break for far longer than any others before her.  Darcy Lewis, the voluptuously curved Political Science major, had damn near broke him instead.  How did this woman nearly do it? How had he let his guard down so much that she was able to even make him her lover? What power did she have over him that made him disobey his programming in order to take her far away from it all?

He’d never get these answers, and he’d, honestly, never want them.  It’d ruin what little mystery he had to figure out who Darcy Lewis was under her new combat training; even though the minx of a woman had used his sexual attraction against him many times during training, she got good enough that she could take him down well enough in a fair fight.

He doesn’t know if she’d ever be an assassin though, and, he guessed, he didn’t want her to be which is why he brought her to the front doorstep of where some superpowered people resided - he wanted her to get back to being that smart-mouthed woman who could take a punch and then spit her blood on the tops of his combat boots in defiance.

Under her signs of Stockholm Syndrome, she was there.  She was just lying in wait for the time when she’s allowed to wake up again just like he was allowed to when he came out of cryofreeze.

Pulling back from their kiss, he caresses her face with his right hand allowing himself to feel the tears of pain that still cascaded down her face.  He didn’t want to leave her, but, he must and that time has finally come.

“Goodbye, doll” he said softly so only she could hear before he pulled away from her and walked to the end of the alley not once looking back as he heard her break into heavier sobs.

He had to do this.

He had to protect her not matter what.

Because she could do so much better than him.


End file.
